M820A Scorpion Main Battle Tank
The successor to the famous M808 Scorpion, the is the UNSC’s latest main battle tank. An improvement over its predecessor in every way, the M820 is lighter, with improved armour, remote weapon stations, a more powerful cannon, and enhanced electronics. Unlike many new technologies developed post-war, the M820 uses primarily human technology, over recycled Covenant technology, being a showcase for humanity’s reach. Crew The M820A Scorpion is nominally crewed by three men. The driver, who is sat to the forward, underneath the main cab, directly behind him the gunner, then sat to his right is the commander. The driver controls feature two throttle controls for the left and right, with independent suspension controls, a wrap around holographic Heads Up Display with augmented reality and access to the damage control system. Sat behind him is the gunner. The gunner is wired to the gun system, with the helmet linked up the gun sighting systems. The Gunner is linked to a heads up display in his helmet's video output, allowing him to observe through the tank's main sight with his left eye and freely observe the wrap around holographic display of the arear around the tank with his left. The gunner has access to a joystick that he can use to manoeuvre the turret around or traverse it up or down, with a trigger to fire the primary or co-axial gun. Next to this is the over-ride controls to allow the gunner to target solely through his helmet mounted tracking system, allowing him to track the target with his head and eye motions. On the left side of the gunner is the primary fire control systems, allowing him to switch ammunition from the internal storage, access satellite, air or ground reconnaissance to search for targets and engage at extremely long range, or through walls, using the computerised firing system. Sat next to the gunner is the commander, with access to the HUD, the countermeasure suite and the PALADIN Weapon Station just ahead of him, allowing him to defend the tank against multiple threats, deploy countermeasures and direct it. The commander also has his own access shaft allowing him to observe without electronic aids. From here he can also access satellite maps, the communication systems and the damage control system. Electronics Armament The primary armament of the Scorpion tank is the 150mm M990 electrothermal-chemical smoothbore cannon. This cannon is a state of the art gun, mounted on a fully automated loading and targeting turret. The gun is milled as a smoothbore gun to allow it to use the widest variety of ammunition, including spin stabilised shells, sabot discarding rounds and rocket propelled smart rounds. The barrel is coated in insulting thermal jackets, controlled by a independant computer, allowing it to prevent uneven thermal warping. The primary gun is linked to a triple set of sighting systems, with a primary optical camera, with a twenty times optical zoom to allow it to target out to extreme distances, a hybrid passive and active infra-red lighting system, that allows it to view in low levels and enhance this view with high heat sources found in infra-red and the last sighting system is a LASER unit, capable of acting both as a range finder but also as a LIDAR system, allowing it to scan and accurately range targets. The main gun is fed by an auto-loader in the turret, utilising a number of internal stores with digital encoding to tag each round as its specific type. Rounds are loaded into a six shot style revolver and different rounds can be removed or replaced, allowing the gunner to have at least six different kinds of ammunition ready at all times. The ammunition storages are hardened against attack, but are designed to explode outwards in case of attack, protecting the crew from a potentially deadly ammunition cook off. The turret also houses a co-axial gun, a M247H2 Heavy Machine Gun firing 12.7x99mm rounds. This chain gun is fed from an internal drum and has to be manually reloaded, but carries sufficient ammunition stows to allow it to operate for long periods of time. The gun has its own bore camera to allow accurate fire and can be used as a spotting weapon for the main gun. The weapon is extremely efficient at mowing down unprotected infantry. The Secondary weapon is a PALADIN Weapon Station The PALADIN WS is a versatile, remotely operated weapon station, allowing the commander to maintain a close in defensive weapon. The Paladin is controlled completely remotely, with its own built in sensors and countermeasures. The PALADIN can be fitted with a M247H2 HMG, a M11 Autocannon, a MG460 AGL, M41B2 MAV/AW, MX93 ADWS or M780 SPW to allow it to adapt to different situations, such as anti-infantry, anti-armour or close in protection. The M820A had the facility to mount a pair of sponson weapon systems. These bolt onto pylon nubs on either side of the gun and elevate with the main gun. These pylons allow a tank to augment itself with additional fire power to augment its ability, such as short range rocket artillery, anti-aircraft capabilities, anti-tank missiles, anti-infantry weapons and so forth. Usually one Scorpion per platoon will be augmented in this manner, to allow it to preform additional tasks assigned by command. The sponson gun mounts include direct fire 70mm ASR-34 Chimera rockets in a 25 round launcher, for medium range fire saturation, a pair of 'Calliope' launchers with 19 110mm rockets for short range artillery bombardment, a pair of 30mm autocannons for mid range fire suppression, a pair of heavy flamers for short range fire suppression, coating an area in napalm, a pair of M41 Light Anti-Aircraft Guns for close in anti-infantry fire, a single BGM-89 Venom ATGW launch tube for long range anti-tank fire or a single line breaching charge. Counter Measures Sensors Electronic Countermeasures and Warfare Armour and Chassis Powerplant and Engines Role Variants Since the rearmament program the UNSC requested a number of new vehicles. Masver-Tor engineering sorted this problem by building a wide array of support vehicles on the Scorpions chassis, as well as several other vehicles using its chassis and engine. M820A Scorpion Armoured Repair and Recovery Vehicle The M820A Scorpion AVE has removed both the turrets and these have been replaced by two high powered winches on the rear boogies and a crane in place of the turret. The front boogies carry large metal shielding for the support engineers, often armed with welders, shovels and other engineering equipment. At the front it possess a hydraulic dozer blade on each end with scarifiers for digging into hard surfaces to become a stabilizer blade, capable of giving it greater lifting weight and also move debris away. It packs a highly improved engine, taking up space formerly used by the turret, to give it greater power, along with the crane which uses a liquid metal layer made famous by the MJOLNIR armour, now cheaper to make and use because of new technologies. It is easily capable of lifting and or pulling free a damaged or stuck Scorpion tank, along with even dragging a broken down Elephant. It also has an equipment storage, with spare ceramic and titanium plating or tracks to replace damaged ones on vehicles. M820A Scorpion Assault Vehicle Engineers The M820A Scorpion AVE is essentially a Scorpion with a modified turret, bogies and a front and rear carrying module. The turret is now a 190mm demolitions mortar, not effective for dealing with vehicles but ideal for demolishing buildings and obstacles, though it has effectiveness against infantry. It carries hydraulic support struts to enhance its stability on rough ground. The two modules are made for carrying optional equipment, such as the front module, it is able to take mine ploughs, dozer blades, front load, it can use a large roll of tough material to give it and the tanks following it a stable footing in muddy, sandy or other tough terrains, it can take a bundle of stiff pipe on both modules which can be layed across ditches to provide the tank and the following ones ease of movement over them. The rear module can also take a earth moving scoop, a earth borer capable of boring 2 meters, a rake for digging up rodes, it can be attached to an armoured sled for pulling along sapper teams or equipment, a MOLE Sled, for deploying mines or a WEASEL sled for deploying mine clearing missiles. Most of the equipment is hydraulic. It also carriers onboard equipment for cutting granite, steel or drilling along with armoured explosive carriers. M820A Scorpion Armoured Ramp Carrier The Bridge Layer variant, the M820G Armoured Ramp Carrier has the turret removed and insteads carriers a hydralic cradle carrying either 24 meters long and 4.16m wide or 13m long and just as wide bridges. These are carried in a double hinged section and can bridge gaps 2 meters shorter than their length. M820B2 Wolf Spider Air Defence System The first major refit of the Scorpion, the Wolf Spider uses four Misriah 40mm gun in a quad set up, with a computer guidance system that can track air targets, and with anti-air missiles on either side of the turret. Developed as a heavy air defence vehicle, it can tear enemy vehicles from the sky, but is equally adept at clearing infantry and light vehicles. M822A2 Monitor Anti-Vehicle Platform The Monitor is armed with a powerful gauss cannon to create a excellent tank hunting platform, at the cost of effectiveness against personnel or structures. M823E4 Komodo Anti-Vehicle Platform The Komodo is a heavily upgraded version of the Monitor that instead of a gauss gun uses a larger LASER cannon capable of severely damaging multiple tanks simultaneously. The weapon is strong enough to even assault Scarab walkers. M824 Panther Close Assault Vehicle The Panther is a specialized close assault vehicle, fitted with two 20mm rotary cannons and a battery of anti-tank missiles. This rank is designed to defeat enemy personnel in urban situations, where standard M808s would suffer. UNSC Remarks Images Category:UNSC Vehicles